SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 190,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
Last week, we asked: How good are you at motivating yourself through challenging times?
- Extremely — challenging times simply aren’t challenging for me: 8.95%
- Very — I’m able to easily motivate myself through challenges: 53.04%
- Somewhat — I can get through tough times but it takes work: 33.11%
- Not very — I struggle through challenging times: 4.39%
- Not at all — I need a lot of help from others to overcome challenges: .51%
Leaders must lead themselves. We’ll all face adversity on a regular basis. As leaders, there aren’t many people there to pick us up and motivate us through those challenges so that task falls on our own shoulders. The fastest way to pick yourself up is to establish a touchstone phrase or memory that can quickly reorient your thinking from “woe is me” to “let’s get moving.” The faster you’re able to reorient yourself, the faster you can get your team moving in a productive direction as well.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS and author of “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”